Ontario Cold Cases and Missing Persons

On Sunday, December 4th, 1983, art teacher Thomas Cahill was stabbed to death in his home on Berkeley St. Charles Furlong, a tenant in Cahill’s house, had heard Cahill talking to someone downstairs, and then, at 4:45 a.m., he heard Cahill call his name. When Furlong came downstairs, he found the front door open and Cahill lying in a pool of his own blood. Police believed Cahill was stabbed by a departing visitor. He had spent Saturday night at the Parkside Tavern on Yonge St.

From The Body Politic (January/February 1984)

Police are asking for help in locating the murderer of Thomas Cahill, 44, a high school art teacher found stabbed at his Berkeley Street home early Sunday morning, December 4.

Cahill was taken to St Michael’s Hospital, where he died 30 minutes later.

Sgt Herman Lowe of the homicide squad said police have been questioning people, including hustlers in the downtown area, who may have seen Cahill in the hours before his death. Individuals have been “most cooperative,” Lowe said.

Cahill was last seen at the St Charles Tavern early that Saturday evening.

Anyone with information about Cahill’s whereabouts between 7 pm December 3 and 4:30 am December 4 can call Toronto Homicide.

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Elementary school teacher Graham Pearce, 36, was stabbed in the throat in the master bathroom of his 25th-floor apartment at 35 High Park Ave. on Sunday, March 20th, 1983. By the time his roommate found him shortly before 1 p.m., Pearce had bled to death. Police believed the bachelor was murdered by someone he either brought home with him or admitted to the apartment early on Sunday morning. Police later learned Pearce had spent Saturday night at Stages, an upstairs gay bar at the Parkside Tavern on Yonge St. near Wellesley St., where he was last seen by a friend walking to his car at 3:30 a.m. Sunday morning.

COLD CASE: Toronto police appealing for leads in 1983 murder of single, gay man in High Park area

Person of interest Ronald Thomas Gale died in 2001 before being ID’d in case

Toronto police are appealing to the public for leads in a cold case murder dating back to 1983.

Graham Hugh Pearce, 36, died on Sunday March 20, 1983 around 12:40 p.m. after being fatally stabbed in an apartment at 35 High Park Ave.

Pearce’s roommate called police after arriving home to find Pearce dead on the bathroom floor.

Pearce was a single, gay man, who was a teacher in Peel Region, police said.

Police issued a YouTube video appeal Wednesday to the public asking for assistance in finding Pearce’s killer.

Toronto police homicide Det.-Sgt. Stacy Gallant said the investigation revealed Pearce had bar-hopped the night before his death on March 19, 1983.

Pearce drove home that night after 3 a.m. in his vehicle, a 1973 Plymouth, “along with his would-be killer or killers,” Gallant said.

Police identified a person of interest through evidence, Ronald Thomas Gale, then 22, Gallant said. Gale died in 2001, before investigators identified him in the case, he added.

Cold case investigators are appealing to anyone who knew Gale, or knew who Gale’s friends and associates were in 1983, to contact police, Gallant said.

Investigators are also appealing to people in their 50s and 60s in the gay community who may have information.

Anyone with information is asked to contact police at 416-808-7474 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 416-222-TIPS (8477).

Cops seek help in murder cases

TORONTO — Metro police are asking for help in solving the separate murders of two Toronto gay men found stabbed to death in their apartments within a recent three-week period.

The body of Graham Pearce, a 36- year-old teacher, was discovered by his roommate in his High Park highrise apartment shortly after noon on Sunday, March 20, 1983. The previous night, Pearce had gone for a drink with a friend to the gay bar, Boots, and later to Stages disco on Yonge Street. (Note: the bars differ from the Parkside Tavern listed above) He and his friend danced until 3:15 am, walked up Yonge St and parted company at Wellesley St at 3:30 am. Pearce was last seen walking west on Wellesley St in the direction of a parking lot where his car was parked.

According to Metro Police Homicide Squad officer Sgt Brian Raybould, Pearce was wearing blue jeans, blue T-shirt and a dark bomber jacket at the time. Raybould described Pearce as 5 ft 8 inches, stockily built with dark brown hair going to bald. Although the photo released by police shows Pearce wearing glasses, he always wore contact lenses when downtown.

Less than three weeks later, at 11 pm on April 5, 1983 police and the fire department were called to extinguish a fire in a condominium in the East York apartment complex of Crescent Town. After the fire
was put out, police discovered the nude body of Donald Weir in the bathtub. The 50- year-old Weir had died of multiple stab wounds.

Homicide’s Staff-Sgt Don Sangster said Weir was last seen in a store in Crescent Town at 6 pm on the day of the murder. Earlier in the day he had also been seen in a bank and a couple of hotels on
Danforth Ave. “We don’t know if he was in the bars that night,” Sangster told TBP, although it is known that he occasionally drank at Boots and the Quest. Waiters at both bars do not recall seeing him that night. Weir’s roommate recently returned from a holiday out of the province. Police say he reported certain property was missing from the apartment. (Note: do they mean after he returned from vacation or after the murder?)

According to the investigating officers, there are no definite suspects in either case at the moment. The local media have attempted to link the murders (“Fatal pattern haunts gays,” screamed one Toronto Sun headline) but police were more cautious. “There isn’t anything that connects the two,” Staff-Sgt Tom Milne stated flatly.

Sgt Raybould said police were checking out hustlers and street people in the downtown area. He said a number of men were under investigation, and mentioned a list of individuals known to frequent downtown bars. “We’re not having much luck,” Staff-Sgt Sangster admitted.

Initial media coverage of the murders did not mention the sexual orientation of the victims. It was only after the Weir death that the Sun began to stress the gay connection. “We’ve never reported this as a homosexual killing,” Sgt Raybould said. Although he said there were no official police guidelines on the matter, “my decision is that you’re in big trouble if you brand a killing a gay killing. First of all, how do you know it is? One of these days we’ll have one that isn’t. Besides,” he added, “there’s a Charter of Rights in this country now.”

“We don’t mention anyone’s lifestyle,” said Staff-Sgt Sangster, “but there’s no harm in mentioning the bars the deceased went to.”

Both Sangster and Raybould said that members of the gay community have been cooperative in coming forward with information. “There’s been a great response from people,” Sgt Raybould said.

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On Friday, May 31st, 1974, seven-year-old Cheryl Hanson vanished while walking east along Bloomington Sideroad near Yonge St. in the town of Aurora, about 35 km north of downtown To

ronto. Her parents had permitted her to walk to her cousin’s house for a sleepover, and the little girl left her home at about 6:30 p.m. Her route from her home to her cousin’s would have taken her about one kilometre east along Bloomington Rd., at the time a dirt road dotted with the odd residence or farm.

Despite massive searches, no trace of Cheryl was ever found, however the presumption is she was murdered. In 1976, a mental patient locked up for other crimes against young women confessed to murdering her, but his story was unable to be verified.

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James Stewart Kennedy, 49, was found strangled and beaten to death in his apartment on Jarvis St. on Monday, September 20th, 1976. Kennedy worked at the Department of National Revenue on Adelaide St., and his body was found when he failed to show up for work as usual. A towel had been knotted tightly around his neck and his face had been badly battered. The victim, a bachelor, had last been seen Saturday night.

Again, credit cards are missing. Kennedy’s neighbours describe him as “a recluse.” Kennedy was last seen at the St. Charles Tavern the night before he was killed.

The deaths of Harold Walkley, James Douglas Taylor, James Kennedy, Brian Latocki and Sandy Leblanc shared a similar element — overkill. The victims were slabbed many times. Two also had their heads beaten in. In three of the unsolved deaths, the victim was last seen leaving the St Charles Tavern on Yonge Street.

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Tuesday, January 25th, 1977: The nude body of 24-year-old Brian Latocki is found tied to a bed in his Erskine Ave. apartment. The victim, a financial analyst with the Toronto Dominion bank, had been strangled, beaten, and stabbed several times in the chest and back. Latocki was last seen on the evening of Friday the 21st as he left a gay bar on Yonge St. with a man who purportedly offered him a ride home. That man was described as of East or West Indian origin, in his mid-twenties, with thin features, a medium-brown complexion, and an Afro.

Police at the time believed the killer was a sadist who enjoyed torturing and killing homosexuals. He may have been responsible for the deaths of several other gay men around the same time.

“There were suspects, but no proof,” says Ken Andrews, now retired and active as a community volunteer as he nears age 79.
“A friend discovered Sandy’s body when paying a visit to his apartment. He called police, of course, and a certain then-homicide detective by the name of Julian Fantino was an investigator. My friend thought it odd that a follow-up interview never took place.”
A few years later, former David’s co-owner Mark Lefkofski, who also co-owned Detroit men’s bar Menjo’s for a period, was murdered in that city.
“It was absolutely devastating, the way that Sandy was murdered, but at the time, it was seen as possible that he’d brought the wrong person home,” recalls John Weber, who went on to DJ at clubs including Sutton Place disco Stop 33, Space disco and The Barn (he’s now retired).
“But then, when it came to Mark also being murdered, it seemed like there was something else involved there. Maybe bikers or mob money – it seems we’ll never know.”

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TORONTO — Police say they have no leads yet in the brutal slaying of Sandy LeBlanc, manager and part owner of Studio 11, a gay disco on Carlton Street.

In an interview with TBP, homocide Sergeant Julian Fantino asked that the message go out to the gay community that the police are ” extremely concerned ‘ ‘ about the murder, and are eager for “assistance from anyone in the gay community who can help. We especially want to talk to anyone who knew LeBlanc’s movements in the early hours of Wednesday, September 20.” LeBlanc was last seen at 3:15 Wednesday morning, presumably after leaving a party held at Studio 1 1 to celebrate its second anniversary.

Fantino emphasized that the police would treat any information given to them with the strictest confidence, and that names need never be made public. He agreed, however, that such individuals might be required to testify, and in that case would have to be public.

LeBlanc was the second gay man to have been murdered in a week, but gay spokespersons do not feel that the murders are related. An arrest has been made in the murder of Gerald Douglas White, which occurred only days before the LeBlanc killing. There have also been three arrests on charges of second degree murder in the death of Colin Nicholson, killed August 27 in a building next to the one in which LeBlanc lived .

According to George Hislop, President of the Community Homophile Association of Toronto, the murders that are related still have not seen any arrests. There have been a series of very similar murders
in Toronto in which gay men have been tied up, brutally beaten and killed. “These recent murders are different,” said Hislop, “they appear to be unrelated and the police are arresting suspects.”

Anyone with information they feel may be of assistance to the police in the LeBlanc case should contact Sgt Julian Fantino, Homocide, at 967-2222.